GM Antoaneta Stefanova of Bulgaria was an impressive winner of the 1st World Mind Sports Games Rapid Individual Womens preliminaries with an unbeaten 8/9 score, a full point ahead of the steady GM Zhao Yue of China. WGM Huang Qian of China and IM Jovanka Houska shared third and fourth places a further half point behind and were the surprise qualifiers.

Top seeded Hou Yifan, the home darling and newly crowned World Champion GM Alexandra Kosteniuk of Russia both dropped out of contention early and despite late rallies could only finish with a disappointing 5.5/9.

In the semi-finals, Stefanova and Zhao qualified for the Finals to be played tomorrow with easy victories over Houska (1.5-0.5) and Huang (2-0) respectively.

In the Rapid Individual Mens preliminaries, GM Alexandr Fier of Brazil was top through tiebreak over GM Zhang Zhong of Singapore who had led throughout and therefore could even afford to lose his last two games. Both finished with 6.5/9 and were joined by GM Bu Xianghi of China and the consistent GM Anton Korobov of Ukraine who together with the unlucky GM Wang Hao of China who lost out on tiebreak, all finishing with 6/9.

GM Bu will carry China's hopes for Gold in the final against GM Korobov who will be hoping to win Ukraine's second Gold medal.

In the semi-finals, Bu eliminated Zhang, a former China No.1 in a tense elimination match after their two regular rapid games were drawn while Korobov qualified in exactly the same way against Fier!

Full coverage of the 1st World Mind Sports Games is at www.2008wmsg.org/en and all games are at www.2008wmsg.fide.com